


High in the sunlit silence

by Caddock (laureate)



Series: PacRim AU [1]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013), TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works, The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-31
Updated: 2013-07-31
Packaged: 2017-12-21 22:56:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/905930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laureate/pseuds/Caddock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They should be the perfect co-pilots.  They aren't, and it would take a crisis for them to ever pilot together again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	High in the sunlit silence

**Author's Note:**

> For my lovely Kili, because we are terrible people who love to torment each other with perfect muses.

“Why aren't you co-pilots?”

 

_As trainers they are incomparable, unbeatable. They coordinate fluidly and clearly, speaking not only the same language but a language all their own, in tune with each other and the spaces that can be shared and those that must be walked around. They cover each other's openings and have a friendship that many envy, tossed together rough and tumble yet forged with fire and strong. They are the perfect example of how co-pilots should be. But no one other than the newest of cadets ever mentions it._

_On paper many look at their reports, their records, and wonder why–other than a brief stint at the Vladivostok Shatterdome–they have never been paired together. The direct superiors often clear any questions up, but they, as well as Brandybuck and Durin, refuse to consider reassignment together as co-pilots. They do well enough now, terrifying new Ranger-wannabes at the Kwoon Combat Arena._

 

Merry doesn't need to look at Kili to know the pain that is flashing across his face, the empty loss that threatens to swallow them both.

_The moment the Drift is initiated, and they are connected it feels a bit like flying again, as though something missing has been restored. It's a shared feeling, but it doesn't last long. The attack is brutal, painful, and by the end they are both left feeling shattered, raw, a heady mixture of grief and guilt and pain._

_Once they finally step away, disconnect, they both shed their uniforms and bolt out of the Jaeger, and Merry, beyond the grief, feels weighted with a guilt nearly as deep as the hole form which the Kaiju came, for he still **has**  his, sort of._

_He never visits Pippin. He does not dare. The first time he tried, Pippin started to scream, high and keening, and he has never gone back._

_He cannot meet Diamond's eyes, having shared minds with his cousin. He cannot face her accusation. He cannot tell her of the deep rift within their shared minds–their **mind** , singular–, the rift that has destroyed his cousinbrotherfriendhalf–her husband–when he was the one who escaped it_

 

Merry can tell it's a smile that twists onto his face, but it feels wrong, crooked, as he looks down at the new kid, fresh from wherever, as the room around them grows hushed, watching.

 

_Sometimes, he feels like he is sinking below the waves again, that last mission as their Jaeger was caught, wedged in a fused limb and tailspike, dragging them down as the Kaiju sank below the surface ever closer to the breach. No person had ever been so close as they made it–and, in truth, they very nearly didn't make it back. Merry had looked away for half a second, their familiarty with each other allowing them to split their conscious for brief moments and the whiplash knocked them both out._

_Merry had been in a coma for nearly two months after they had found them both, surrounded by dark and the great bright crack in the Earth's crust. It seemed like a lidless eye seeking to swallow them both in its gaze._

_He hates that feeling. He never pilots the right side of a Jaeger, because if he does, he will forget it is there, and the arm will dangle, useless._

 

“Have you ever Drifted with four people at once?”

The room is silent, and the frightened and awed cadet shakes his head.

“We don't recommend it.” It comes out like an aborted chuckle, a soft hiccup noise you make when you try to laugh because if you don't you'll cry.

 

###### 

_"You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there [...] while with silent lifting mind I've trod The high untresspassed sanctity of space, Put out my hand and touched the face of God."_

-excerpt from  _High Flight_ , by Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [underneath the water](https://archiveofourown.org/works/960436) by [falling_awake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/falling_awake/pseuds/falling_awake)




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